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On Human Relations with Other Sentient Beings is the web site and blog of sociologist Roger Yates
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philosophyRyder (2000: 221) argues that Descartes was ‘desperate’ to conceive of a huge difference between humans and the other animals, despite the contrary evidence produced by his own knife and scalpel. Perhaps this search for separation was important in enabling animal experimenters to perform vivisection on nonhuman animals with a morally clear conscience. If this was the aim, it apparently worked, and scientific anti-vivisectionists and animal advocates such as Hans Ruesch (1979), Richard Ryder (1983; 2000) and Tom Regan (2001) recount in gruesome detail how Cartesian-inspired vivisectors would carry out the most violent experiments, often repeatedly on the same victim, and with no pain relief. Furthermore, they would laugh at anyone who showed concern for the suffering of the experimental ‘models’. Descartes is even reputed to have performed experiments on the dog ‘belonging’ to his wife, much to her disgust and opposition (Ryder 2000: 53).
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theologyCockburn’s (1996: 16) advice about addressing the issue of the construction of human attitudes toward other animals is impressively clear: ‘Start with God’, he says.
With a lively and belligerent style, Cockburn declares that, ‘The Bible is a meat-eater’s manifesto’, or at least it is after a mythical event known as ‘the Fall’. Until then, the story goes, hippie prototypes Adam and Eve were vegetarians, eating grains, nuts and fruit. But, as though she ran across a trippy Jack Kerouac novel, Eve could not resist eating from the ‘tree of knowledge of good and evil’ and boy, have we all paid for that mistake. Cockburn explains what is said to have happened next: Hardly were Adam and Eve out of Eden before God was offering ‘respect’ to the flesh sacrifice of Abel the keeper of sheep and withholding ‘respect’ from Cain the tiller of the ground. Next thing we know, Cain rose up against his brother Abel, slew him and we were on our way (ibid.: 16-17). Thus began ‘Man’s’ ‘dominionism’ over and above creation. Genesis I: 26-28 reports the edict of the Almighty: ‘Man’ was given dominion over the earth and was told to be ‘fruitful and multiply’ in order to ‘subdue’ the planet. |
everyday social practiceFor ‘models of right conduct’ parents and children can look toward a range of talking animals - mice, ducks and hens, or ‘wise old bears and the like’. In scenes that reinforce the ‘safety’ of family life, animal characters are regularly used, typically depicted in scenes of nonhuman mothers looking after their ‘babies’. There is, of course, no divorce here, no child abuse, no neglect and no violent conflict between parents. Sapon moves on to develop a point that could perhaps be presumed; the point that, in these early publications, nonhuman animals are never seen being slaughtered for food, hanging upside down on ‘kill lines’, nor often shown in pieces on the dinner plate. When Paul (1996) considers the representation of other animals in children’s television programmes, a similar pattern emerges. Two major themes emerge. First, a ‘hierarchy of suffering’ in any depiction of animals in which cruelty to mammals was explicitly seen as morally wrong, while fishes and invertebrates ‘were largely excluded from moral concern’. Second, the tendency to avoid discussion - or depiction - of human beings using other animals as meat. According to Paul, ‘mammal meat’ was rarely consumed on television shows and when it was, its ‘origins were either heavily disguised or exaggerated into a joke’.
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